All about the Base - 1978 Topps

Year: 1978

Manufacturer: Topps

Card Set: Flagship

Card Number: 173

Card Type: Base

Welcome to 1978.  Robin was entering his 5th year in the majors and already had close to 600 hits.  This year's design might be even more subdued than the 1977 design, but like most of the 70's sets it's not unappealing.  The previous 2 years Topps had used the baseball graphic to frame the card number, this year Topps moved the baseball to the front of the card for the player position. 

While the card number is a little small it's high on the back of the card for easy box collation.  Gone is the card back cartoon and this year there's a game to be played.  Small error on the back in the write up.  Robin only played for the Newark Pilots in 1973, not 1971.  The card wasn't corrected and is listed as an UER.  

Over all the nice staged photo, but a departure from the great action shot on his 1977 card.  And man that looks like a huge pile of dirt behind him.

Hostess variations

Over the past few months I've come across a couple Hostess oddballs I wasn't familiar with and figure I'd share what I found and what I learned for histories sake.

First up is this 1978 Hostess L shaped panel.  I think most of us are pretty familiar with the three card strip panels found on most hostess boxes from 1975 to 1979.  It's interesting to point out that there's not a ton of information about these.  It's also interesting that for as popular as Hostess cards were and are there really isn't a good source of information about the sets.  I figured one avid collector would have put together a website or blog, but alas most of my information was gathered from forum threads and poking around the internet for images. So if there is a Hostess expert out there and you read this feel free to chime in and correct anything and everything I'm about to say.

So what is an L shaped panel?  It's like the example below where two of the cards are vertical and the third is below oriented horizontally.

From what I pieced together Hostess issued some L shaped panels like the one below from 1976 to 1979.  One message board stated that the L shaped panels, at least in 1976, were only put on cupcake boxes on the east coast.  From some digging I was able to find an image of an intact specimen of a 1978 cupcake box also with an L shape card bottom.  So were all the L shapes only produced on the East Coast and only on cupcake boxes?  Maybe.  1978 is the only year I could find that Robin is featured on one of the L shaped boxes.  All the auctions I've seen fail to state the source of the panels. But these panels are much rarer than the normal strip panels, but the standard catalog doesn't mention this variation in configuration.  This panel is currently (at least at the time of writing) up for sale on eBay with a $50 price tag.

1978 Hostess Cupcake L shaped panel

Here's another interesting oddball I didn't know about. This is a 1977 Hostess cupcake single card.  According to the Standard Catalog the complete 1977 set was printing on these single card cake holders.  But they say cards 1-30 and 111-150 are Twinkies panels and 31-110 are cupcake panels. Robin's card number in the set is 34 so he should be in the cupcake set according to the Catalog.  The uncut cupcake cards are longer and skinner than their Twinkies counterparts. But I know for a fact that he's also has a single Twinkie card.  I've include a scan of my 1977 Twinkie card below.  The explanation in the Standard Catalog is either wrong or I'm reading it wrong. Either way I found a great post on a Net54Baseball forum.  It's also interesting to point out that the post also describes multiple other single card sizes, although I don't think Robin has an example in those variations.

1978 Hostess Cupcake Single front

1978 Hostess Cupcake Single Back

1977 Hostess Twinkie Single front

Well there you go a few more Younts to chase in the Hostess sets.  Oh and the cupcake single recently sold on eBay for $26.

1977 Hostess Twinkies Single Cards

Year: 1978

Card Manufacturer: Hostess

Card Set: Hostess Baseball 

Card Type: Base Hostess Singles variation

The third and final Hostess Twinkie card in my collection.  I think this is also the last year Hostess had this variation.  As you can see it's very greased stained.  I know that unused cards exist, but it was hard to pass up the deal I got on this card years ago.  Of course the card was used as part of the packaging and the Twinkies sat directly on the card.  I'm not sure if these cards came in other products like cupcakes and snoballs, but even if this card had been trimmed down you can tell it's the variation by the black bar on the back.

1978 O-Pee-Chee

Card Manufacturer: O-Pee-Chee

Card Set: O-Pee-Chee baseball

Year: 1978

Card Number: 29

Card Type; Base

A lot of my Black Friday pick ups for Robin concentrated on more modern cards, but I did manage to add a few more vintage cards to the collection.  While I've had a complete Topps run of Robin's playing days I've been slow to pick up his O-Pee-Chee counterparts.  

I was able to add a couple O-Pee-Chee cards I needed the first being this 1978 example. 

While the photo and layout are exactly the same for both Topps and O-Pee-Chee, the card numbering is different and the card clearly has both French and English on the back and the O-Pee-Chee copyright.

I also think O-Pee-Chee used slightly better card stock.  O-Pee-Chee cards bring a little bit of a premium as they had a smaller print run and were only released in Canada.

Nice to have this one marked off the checklist.

1978 7-11 Slurpee Cup

Collectible Type: Drinkware

Manufacturer: 7-11

Types: Slurpee Cup

Year: 1978

I know I featured this a while back in a larger post featuring all my Yount drinkware.  And oddly enough I think I have over 5 different pieces in that collection now.

We have here another great oddball collectible the 1978 7-11 Slurpee Cup.  Over the years 7-11 has offered tons of different players not only in baseball, but other sports and comic book characters as well.  The cup is plastic and features a nice head shot with the team logo airbrushed out and a short bio on the opposite site.  I have also seen another version of this cup with a different photo on it, but that might also be from another year.